TWISTER JUST COULDN’T believe it; he had cocked up again. What was it about this job? It was almost as if it were jinxed.
Pulling into the wayside pub on the edge of the Levels, he ordered a pint and a whisky chaser before slumping into a corner by the open fire. The bar was virtually empty and, after one curious glance in his direction, the girl who had served him rejoined the long-haired youth at the other end of the counter to continue chatting him up.
Twister took a long pull on his pint, then in a sudden spasm of anger picked up his glass of whisky and drained it in a gulp.
Part of the problem was that he had only ever seen Kate Hamblin at a distance. The kid who had waltzed into her flat had looked just like her in the poor light – had actually appeared to be the living spit of her when he’d dumped her in the chair under the standard lamp. As it had turned out, she was her bloody twin, so it had been easy to make that initial mistake. But he’d soon realized he’d got the wrong person when he’d seen the needle tracks and the ruptured veins, and he had cursed himself for an idiot. He should have sussed it earlier; the earthy unwashed smell of someone used to sleeping rough was like no other – and her hair – ugh! Filthy.
He took another gulp of his beer and rolled it around his mouth for a moment. He had probably done her a favour by snuffing out her lights, but she would never know anyway; he’d snapped her neck just like Ray Jury, after they’d had a ‘little chat’ about things. Had to. Couldn’t afford to risk being picked out by her on some future ID parade.
So where did he go from here? He was tempted to keep on driving. The job now had as bad a smell to it as the junkie he’d just stiffed. Another mistake and he could end up in stir. Trouble was, there was too much money at stake to simply bail out and he was in too deep. Topping a few A-rabs in the desert was one thing when you were under the colours, but the cold-blooded murder of a couple of British coppers was in a totally different league. Old Bill would never let this one go, so he would need every penny of the pay-off he was expecting to fix up a new identity for himself and then to get out of the country.
At least he’d covered his tracks well enough. He was pretty certain no one had seen him break into the flat or leave it afterwards and he had been careful to avoid making Old Bill a gift of his prints or DNA – even washing up his whisky glass, despite the fact that he had been wearing gloves. That meant he was in the clear for another crack at Miss Lucky Knickers. This time though it couldn’t be just another hit; the dynamics had changed. He needed that little chat with her first to find out what had happened to his tracking device and who the guy in the Jag was. And now that she was still alive, it was suddenly very important to find out why she had met Terry Duval under Burnham pier and what he had told her. No loose ends, he was definite about that. But getting the thing done with the sort of bad luck he had been having lately wouldn’t be easy.
Draining his pint, he nodded towards the girl behind the bar and headed back out to the car-park and his Land Rover. Finding Kate Hamblin again would be his first real challenge. Her flat would now be a crime scene and it was very unlikely that she would be able – or want – to return there in the immediate future. But she’d have to go somewhere and his best bet was the guy who had collected her from the hospital and run her out to Jury’s place – after all, there couldn’t be that many local Samaritans around with a red Mk 2 Jaguar.
Kate was in a hole and even in her shocked ethereal state, she knew it. By rejecting the advice of the paramedics attending the murder scene that she should return to hospital with them in the ambulance for a check-up, she had played right into DCI Callow’s hands. As a result, she had been left with no option but to submit to what promised to be a dismembering interrogation back at the station.
Callow had questioned Lewis first, but had got nowhere; his carefully worded replies convincing her that he knew nothing of what Kate was up to and, as she put it crudely to DI Roscoe afterwards, was simply ‘sticking with the little tart in the hope of getting into her knickers’.
Callow had saved Kate until last, leaving her to sweat in another office while she finished a second cup of coffee and reviewed the facts the detective sergeant at the flat had given her. When she finally collected her and sat her in the chair on the other side of the interview- room desk, there was a gleam of malicious anticipation in the dark eyes as she popped a mint into her mouth with the relish of a cobra devouring a mouse.
‘So young lady, here we are again – you and I, eh?’
Kate said nothing, but stared unseeing at the far wall.
‘You found the dead woman, I understand?’
Kate nodded and returned her intense gaze with a strange indifference, the debilitating shock she had suffered reasserting itself and numbing her senses – as well as her susceptibility to intimidation.
Callow seemed irritated by her disconnected manner. ‘And what time was that?’ she snapped.
There was a long pause before Kate surfaced from her comfortable dreamlike state, her brows knitted together in a frown, as if she had trouble extracting the information from her short-term memory. ‘About - about an hour and a half ago,’ she said distantly. ‘Came home and she was in the chair – dead.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Do?’
Callow hissed her frustration. ‘Did you cut the bloody cords around her wrists, damn it?’
The DCI’s sharp aggressive response seemed to have the effect of shaking Kate out of her semi-reverie and her focus suddenly snapped back into place.
‘No,’ she blurted, as if she had been given a mental shove. ‘Hayden did. He called by and found the door open. Thought Linda was me.’
‘He tells me she was your twin. Is that correct?’
Kate nodded again.
‘A junkie, eh? I saw the tramlines.’
There was a flicker of resentment in Kate’s eyes. ‘She was a heroin addict, yes.’
‘So what was your junkie sister doing in your flat?’
Kate flinched, her mouth tightening as anger now began to sharpen her senses. ‘Probably looking for me for help.’
‘She had a key then?’
Kate took a deep breath. ‘She turned up the other night out of the blue; probably took it when she raided my handbag for cash while I was out of the room.’
‘According to my information, she was supposed to be on compulsory rehab.’
Kate shrugged. ‘Possibly.’
‘Yet you didn’t report her visit, even though she was an absconder in breach of the conditions of her suspended sentence.’
Kate stared at her wearily. ‘You have been busy, haven’t you?’
Callow’s eyes became mere slits. ‘Don’t get clever with me, miss; you’re already in deep shit.’
Kate stared at her with contempt. ‘So shoot me, why don’t you?’
Callow stiffened in her seat, fazed slightly by Kate’s uncharacteristic behaviour, and when she continued, her approach was more measured. ‘The ambulance crew reckon she died from a broken neck. The pathologist will obviously confirm or otherwise later, but for now, any idea why someone would want to do that?’
Kate shuddered, conscious of her hands trembling as she remembered walking in on Linda’s corpse, but for some reason found herself fresh out of tears. ‘How could I?’ she breathed.
‘You don’t seem particularly upset by the tragedy.’
‘That’s not fair.’
Callow’s face hardened. ‘No, it isn’t, is it?’ she grated. ‘But then neither is murder and I am curious as to why someone would gag and tie up a young woman, subject her to a beating, then snap her spine like twig. As it seems to have happened in your flat, maybe you could help me there?’
Kate sensed danger and swallowed quickly. ‘I told you, Hayden thought Linda was me. Her killer probably thought the same thing.’
‘And why would this person – whoever he is – want to kill you?’
‘For the same reason he ran me off the road—’
‘Oh come on,’ Callow cut in. ‘You’re not still claiming that your accident was the work of some shadowy bogey man trying to prevent you rubbishing the case against Duval?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Mock as much as you like, but I know it was and I still don’t believe Duval is our killer either.’
Callow’s thin lips twisted into a sneer. ‘Don’t you?’ she retorted. ‘And I suppose this bogey man was the same one who followed you all the way to Jury’s yard and stiffed Ray Jury?’
In an instant Kate was thrown off balance and she stared at Callow as if mesmerized. ‘Ray Jury?’ she gasped. ‘Ray Jury’s dead?’
The DCI nodded, pleased that she had finally managed to rattle her. ‘As mutton, my dear. Looks like his neck was broken too.’
‘But – but he was alive when we left his place.’
Callow lurched forward across the desk. ‘Is that right? Well, I think it mighty coincidental that you and your boyfriend should have dropped in at the yard minutes before he called for police assistance.’
Now Kate could feel the fear building up inside her like an ice-cold cramp. ‘Surely you don’t think Hayden and I—?’
Callow sat back in her chair and studied her over steepled fingers. ‘Why not? Maybe you panicked when Jury saw what you’d found underneath your car and you decided to shut him up.’
For a second Kate’s guard slipped and she nearly fell into Callow’s trap by telling her about the tracking device. Just in time she bit her tongue. ‘I – I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t you? We have a witness who saw you remove something from under the car and take it with you when you left. What was that all about?’
Despite her traumatized state, Kate’s defence mechanism, sharpened by Callow’s bullying tactics, came to her aid, alerting her to the flaw in the DCI’s Dr Watson-style analysis. Skilfully turning the tables without answering her question, she said, ‘We were seen to leave then, were we? So at that stage Ray Jury must obviously have still been alive, which puts a nice big spike in your theory, doesn’t it?’
‘You could have doubled back.’
Now Kate was incredulous. ‘Do me a favour, Chief Inspector. You’ve been watching too many TV cop films.’
Callow’s face twisted into a spiteful mask, but before she could respond, the interview was interrupted by the discordant blast of the mobile she had placed on the desk in front of her.
Without taking her eyes off Kate, she spat an acknowledgment into the phone and listened intently, her face softening as she did so, until a triumphant smile replaced the venom in her expression and she ended the call in a positively upbeat mood.
‘That was DI Roscoe at your little flat,’ she now purred. ‘Apparently SOCO have so far found some interesting fibres and lots of nice marks, so it will be necessary for you and your boyfriend to come in here tomorrow to provide the usual elimination prints.’
‘As serving police officers, our fingerprints will already be on file,’ Kate cut in.
Callow’s smile became even more pronounced. ‘Maybe so,’ she agreed, ‘but since your flat has now become a crime scene, I require you to provide elim prints anyway – if that’s not too much trouble, for you?’
Kate nodded and studied her warily, knowing from Callow’s change in attitude that something else was coming that she wouldn’t like.
The DCI paused for a moment to slip another mint into her mouth, obviously enjoying the tension she had created. ‘The prints and fibres are all good stuff, of course,’ she went on, ‘but not of immediate value to the investigation as conclusive results will take time. But’ – and she leaned forward again across the desk – ‘what is of immediate value is the fact that we have a witness.’
‘A witness?’ Kate could not help a sharp intake of breath.
The gleam in the DCI’s eyes became more intense. ‘An elderly resident who not only saw a man run away from the scene at about the right time, but was able to give us a detailed description of him – and guess what? That description fits Terry Duval to a tee.’ She crunched her mint once like a dry bone. ‘So much for your phantom bogeyman, eh?’
The fire was nearly out when Lewis ushered Kate into the living room of his cottage and she sank on to the settee while he stoked up the dying flames again.
They had hardly spoken on the way back from Highbridge, each busy with their own thoughts, and Lewis’s opening remark of ‘So how was it?’ as he had helped her into his car had been greeted with a hostile ‘Just don’t go there’. He knew all about Duval being tied to the crime scene by a witness – news travels fast in the police service and the skeleton crew in the general office had been full of it – but he had known better than to broach the subject to Kate. She was obsessed with the idea that Duval was innocent and in her present fragile condition and with Lewis himself on the verge of exhaustion, this was not the time for a heated debate.
There were other considerations too. The killer had obviously been after Kate when he had confronted Linda and he would know he had made a bad mistake. That meant he was bound to be looking for Kate again and a thatched cottage stuck out on the Levels at Burtle was not the ideal refuge for a vulnerable target. Lewis frowned as he turned to look at his charge. She had slumped sideways on the settee, with her eyes closed, and appeared to be out for the count. ‘Gordon Bennett!’ he muttered. ‘An assassin on one side and the Wicked Witch of the North on the other. Which leaves us both right up the creek without a paddle.’
Grabbing a duvet from his bed, he trailed it down the stairs into the room and draped it over Kate’s prostrate form, carefully sliding a cushion under her head. Then, checking that the doors and windows were locked, he dropped into a chair by the fire and awaited developments, a heavy poker in one hand.
The pub was a well-known haunt of local police officers finishing the late shift and Twister propped himself on a rickety stool at the bar with a pint in front of him. The place was packed, despite the fact that it was well after the usual drinking hours. A couple of the force’s finest, civilian coats over their uniforms, were already well oiled, their voices loud and slurred. He wondered if they intended driving home afterwards.
‘Got a light, mate?’ he asked a spotty-faced youngster next to him, noting that his pint glass was nearly empty.
The policeman frowned. ‘Can’t smoke in pubs no more,’ he declared in a thick voice.
Twister swore. ‘Just my luck,’ he growled. ‘Better have a chaser instead then.’ He raised his hand to beckon the bartender and glanced quickly at his new acquaintance. ‘Want to join me?’
The other swayed slightly, turning away from his colleagues. ‘Yeah, don’t mind if I do – beer, thanks.’
Twister watched with grim satisfaction as the policeman downed half of his pint in a gulp. ‘You can certainly hold the old sherbet,’ he commented.
The youngster puffed out his chest. ‘Don’t affect me no more,’ he boasted. ‘Been on it too long.’
Twister nodded. ‘Local Bill, are you?’
The kid’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why do you ask?’
Twister shrugged, staring into his glass. ‘No reason really. Only, one of my mates is in your lot.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, Highbridge CID.’
The other gave a good-natured grin. ‘What the “defective” squad? Load of poofs, they are.’
Twister forced a laugh. ‘Yeah, I’ll drink to that. He must be to drive the motor he’s got – bloody Inspector Morse Jag, I ask you.’
‘What, a red one?’
Twister glanced at him. ‘Yeah, good-looking car though. You know him?’
The policeman chuckled. ‘What, Hayden Lewis? Now he really is a poof. Ex-pubic schoolboy.’ And he laughed again at his unsavoury pun, turning back to his colleagues. ‘Hey, guys, this chap knows ol’ Hayden Lewis.’
Twister’s mouth tightened. He didn’t want the whole crowd in on the conversation. But he need not have worried; they were too interested in a joke one of them was telling to be diverted and they ignored their workmate’s shout.
‘Got a nice pad though, hasn’t he?’
Another snort. ‘If you like the Levels – I mean, who’d want to live in a place with a grass roof?’ He chuckled again. ‘Especially one with a name like The Retreat – sounds like an old folks’ home.’
‘Maybe he likes village life.’
The policeman finished his pint and grabbed hold of the counter for support. ‘Life? Ain’t no life at Burtle – just bloody marsh.’
Time to go. Twister finished his whisky and stretched. ‘Call it a night, I think,’ he said.
His drinking partner grinned again. ‘What, you on to a promise?’
Twister clapped him on the shoulder. ‘More likely a threat at my age, old son. Have a nice life.’
Then he was gone, weaving between the drinkers to the door. Outside he lit a cigarette before heading off down the street to the empty car-park where he had parked his Land Rover in the shadows – and it was his turn to grin as he climbed behind the wheel. So, the man with the Jag was called Hayden Lewis, was he, and he lived in a thatched cottage in Burtle called The Retreat? Well, he shouldn’t be too difficult to find, should he? And finding him would almost certainly mean finding little Miss Katie.
He glanced at his watch. He was tempted to head for Burtle right there and then, but checked himself in time. No sense in rushing things, however important recovery of the tracker was. What was done was done and if Kate and her boyfriend still had the device, they wouldn’t be doing much with it in the middle of the night, would they? And anyway, if they were both home, he could hardly just go up to the cottage in the early hours of the morning and knock them up; that would be plain dumb. No, he would have to handle this last tidying up operation with a bit more aplomb than he had managed so far – check the place out for the tracker first and deal with the two coppers afterwards. Daylight was the best time. Lewis was likely to be at work then and there was an even chance that little Miss Katie would be there on her own. His mouth almost watered at the thought. Ideal. And if she wasn’t actually staying there as he’d assumed, then he could sit and wait for either of the pair to show up, couldn’t he? After all, what had he to lose more than he could have lost already?
He started the engine and eased out into the road, armed with a new sense of purpose. At last he felt good again and after a nice kip, he knew he would feel a whole lot better – well enough, in fact, to embrace a brand new fulfilling day.